DG Site Updates: 30,000 year old plant seeds grown!, 1 by Zen_Man

Zen_Man wrote:
I expect that Tissue Culture will be used to recover other extinct plants from still living cells found in the permafrost. Just one microscopic cell could be enough. And these plants will be able to produce viable seeds, so they may be widely grown again. I have a little bit of concern that some of these prehistoric plants might have the ability to become an invasive species, but hopefully due precautions will be taken. It might be possible to cross them with related present-day plants. I would be very interested if they could recover any prehistoric zinnias, because I grow and breed zinnias as a hobby. I would like to get my hands on a prehistoric zinnia. I'm attaching a picture of one of my home-hybridized zinnias that had a kind of wild prehistoric look.

On a somewhat related note, there has been talk of using DNA from a frozen baby mammoth to create a mammoth fetus in an elephant, and thus restore that extinct animal. Maybe the movie Jurassic Park wasn't so far-fetched after all.

ZM